by Hew Strachan
Mitteleuropa in its proper sense, relating to central Europe, had a strategic justification as well as an economic one. Weltpolitik was a German policy; it did not in any way accord with the interests of the Triple Alliance as a whole. Italy as a Mediterranean power was dependent on Anglo-French good will for commercial freedom, and in particular derived almost all its coal (which met 87.6 per cent of its energy needs) from Britain.75 Nor did Austria-Hungary, as it showed through its lack of support in 1905 and 1911, identify with Germany’s Moroccan ventures. By pursuing Mitteleuropa, Germany might bring its alliance commitments and its economic imperialism into line, thus integrating its strategy. To give expression to this, the army—which had seen the navy’s budget grow to 55 per cent of its own between 1897 and 1911—now began to make up for lost time, and to have increases of 29,000 men in 1912 and 136,000 in 1913. By switching the spotlight back to their land forces many Germans felt—with good reason—that they were affirming their natural strengths rather than—as they had been doing with the navy—trying to build from weakness.
If all this had amounted to a consistent policy the events of 1912 to 1914 in the Balkans might not have been as confused as they became, or at least might not have had such wide repercussions. To Austria-Hungary in particular Germany seemed unable to follow a steady course. Partly this was because Germany continued both to affirm the alliance and yet at the same time to undercut Austria-Hungary’s economic position in the Balkans. Furthermore, Germany’s efforts could as often reflect dynastic sympathies (there were Hohenzollerns on the thrones of Greece and Romania) as Austrian interests. Not least because of its doubts about Romania’s loyalty, Austria-Hungary saw Bulgaria, a power without ethnic interests in the population of the empire, as its natural ally in the Balkans: Germany did not. Ironically, too, the very pace of German industrialization confused and weakened Germany’s policies in south-east Europe. By 1913 over half Germany’s foreign investment in Europe and almost 40 per cent in the world was concentrated in the area between Vienna and Baghdad.76 But, despite such figures, Germany was disconsolate. German capital was so absorbed by domestic production that the aggregate left over for foreign investment was small; France—as a power that was industrializing more slowly and where capital therefore remained uncommitted—proved a much more attractive money market for the emergent Balkan states. In Serbia, Greece, and Bulgaria French capital won out over German, and even in Romania—where Germany made special efforts—Germany’s share of state loans and in the oil market fell after 1911. But this was a competition from which Austria-Hungary itself could not derive benefit. Twenty-five per cent of all German foreign loans went to the dual monarchy; the latter imported more from the former than it exported; and yet Austria-Hungary could not diminish its dependence by raising loans on the French Bourse, as the French (with Russian support) would not allow them to do so. Thus Austria-Hungary’s dependence on Germany increased, but its ability to influence German policy declined.77
Austria-Hungary’s loss of control in the Balkans was not simply the result of German activities. The substitution in the region of Austro-Russian antagonism for their erstwhile détente created opportunities for the newly emergent Balkan states. The latter could exploit great-power rivalry for their own ends in a way that great-power collaborative action had in the past made impossible. Thus, while superficially the Balkans appeared to be the focus of Austro-Russian hostility, the inner dynamism of the situation was provided by the opposition of the Balkan states to Turkey. This put Austria-Hungary at a yet greater disadvantage, for the dual monarchy had strapped itself to a losing policy, the maintenance of a Turkish presence in Europe. It hoped thereby to keep the Slav states on its frontiers, and particularly Serbia, in a state of dependence.
The next stage in Ottoman decline was not, however, initiated by the Balkan states themselves, but by the third member of the Triple Alliance, Italy. Despite its humiliation at Abyssinian hands at Adowa in 1896, Italy had not abandoned its colonial aspirations. Growing French strength in the Mediterranean and in Morocco fuelled Italian jealousy, born of the conviction that Italy too was a Mediterranean power. Floated by the patriotic rhetoric celebrating the fiftieth anniversary of the Risorgimento, and anxious to exploit a favourable constellation on the international scene, Italy declared war on Turkey on 29 September 1911 and launched an expedition to seize Libya. Proof was once again to be provided that colonial interests could not be pursued without European consequences.
The threat to Turkey increased Russian sensitivities over the future of the Black Sea straits. Between 1903 and 1912 37 per cent of Russian exports and three-quarters of Russia’s grain shipments passed through the straits.78 Russia’s anxiety that no other state should control such a vital waterway was second only to its desire to control the straits itself. The presence of the Italian navy in the Dodecanese and its bombardment of the Dardanelles in April 1912 gave as concrete expressions to Russian fears as had Austria-Hungary’s behaviour in the Bosnian crisis. Good relations with Bulgaria seemed to be the first step in neutralizing the landward approaches to the straits. Russia’s task was made more easy by Austria-Hungary’s support of Turkey, a policy with little appeal in Sofia. But, alongside this defensive motivation on Russia’s part, there flourished in some quarters a more virulently pan-Slav and anti-Austrian sentiment. N. V. Hartwig, the Romanovs’ representative in Belgrade, was fired by such considerations and played a key role in effecting, on 13 March 1912, a most unlikely rapprochement, an alliance between Serbia and Bulgaria.
Hartwig’s policy was not necessarily the same as that of Sazonov, Izvolsky’s successor as foreign minister. In 1910 and 1911 Russo-German relations improved. The Kaiser and the Tsar met; Sazonov’s visit to Berlin produced an agreement over the Baghdad railway in exchange for German willingness to restrain Austria-Hungary in the Balkans; and the following year Russia—in revenge for its allies’ failure to support it in 1909—stood aloof over Morocco. Even a thawing in Austro-Russian relations was not beyond the bounds of possibility: Franz Ferdinand, somewhat far-fetchedly, found his enthusiasm for the monarchical principle favouring a resuscitation of Bismarck’s Dreikaiserbund, an alliance of Germany, Russia, and Austria-Hungary. In 1910 Russia began a redeployment of its forces to the east, so threatening a weakening of its commitment to France and a reawakening of its antagonism for Japan.79
Therefore Poincaré’s visit to Russia in August 1912 had a dual aim: he wished to restrain Russia in the Balkans, but he also had to reaffirm the Triple Entente.80 However, Poincaré’s efforts to achieve the latter could only undermine the former: France’s repeated affirmation of the Entente in 1912 encouraged Russia to feel confident that, if its Balkan manoeuvres led to a clash with Austria-Hungary and then Germany, France would back it up. Such expectations, once formed, were not undermined by other signals from Paris. In a memorandum prepared for Poincaré on 2 September 1912 the French general staff welcomed war in the Balkans as likely to weaken Austria-Hungary, so freeing Russia to take on Germany: ‘Under these conditions, the Triple Entente . . . could achieve a victory permitting it to remake the map of Europe.’81 Delcassé, appointed as France’s ambassador to St Petersburg in 1913, affirmed France’s support of Russia’s grievances against the Austrians. With France standing by Russia just as surely as Germany stood by Austria-Hungary, the alliance blocs of the great powers were ranged against each other in the Balkans. Their problem was that none of them was a prime mover in Balkan politics.
Russia’s policy, whether embodied by Sazonov or Hartwig, was not at bottom that of Serbia and Bulgaria. The aim of the Serb-Bulgar treaty was to complete the Ottoman ejection from Europe by the conquest and partition of the one surviving piece of Balkan Turkey, Macedonia; the terms contained a secret clause concerning possible attack against Austria-Hungary only if the dual monarchy itself intervened. The policy of Turkey in Macedonia was zealously repressive. In the course of 1912 Greece and Montenegro fell in behind Serbia and Bulgaria. While Germany, Russia,
and Austria-Hungary spoke piously of restraint, the Balkan League—conscious of the opportunity created by the Italian attack on Libya—prepared for hostilities. On 8 October Montenegro declared war on Turkey. On 15 October Turkey came to terms with Italy, forfeiting Libya in its bid to concentrate on the danger closer to home. On 17 October Serbia, Bulgaria, and Greece joined Montenegro. The rapidity and scale of the Balkan League’s success took the great powers by surprise. A high growth rate in the population, without any accompanying industrialization to soak up the available labour, had permitted the Balkan states to form huge peasant armies.82 The Turks, outnumbered by almost two to one, spurned the counsel of their German military advisers and opted for encounter battles rather than defensive ones. By mid-November the Turks had been driven out of Thrace and Macedonia, and stood with their backs to Constantinople.
Turkey’s defeat was a major setback for Germany and for Austria-Hungary. A strong Turkey, putting pressure on Russia in the Black Sea and the Caucasus, and on Britain in Egypt and Persia, relieved the burden on Germany.83 For Austria-Hungary such stunning Slav triumphs could only foster irridentism within the empire. In the immediate term, Serbia’s expansion—and claim to head a South Slav state outside Austria-Hungary—continued. To baulk Serbia, to continue its dependence on other powers, Berchtold, Aehrenthal’s successor as Austria’s foreign minister, insisted on the creation of Albania. His purpose was to prevent Serbia acquiring a Mediterranean port, but on 15 November the Serbs reached the Adriatic. The Austrian army, which had increased its annual intake of conscripts by 42,000 men in October, called up 200,000 reservists in Bosnia-Herzogovina. In Russia the Council of Ministers was divided. Both its chairman, Kokovtsov, and Sazonov feared another humiliation to put alongside the Bosnian crisis, and privately urged Serbia to compromise. Publicly Russia sprang to Serbia’s support. The victories of the Balkan states boosted pan-Slav sentiment, and this found expression in a more bellicose grouping headed by the minister of agriculture, Krivoshein. Russia conducted a trial mobilization in Poland during October and November, and on 22 November (although the order was cancelled the following day) the Tsar succumbed to the war party’s advocacy of a partial mobilization in response to Austrian concentrations in Galicia.84 On 12 December Conrad von Hötzendorff, the advocate of a preventive war against Serbia in 1909, who had been dismissed for his continued espousal of a similar line against Italy, was recalled as chief of the general staff. As in 1909 Austria was using military signals to beef up its diplomacy. Germany had so far seen its task as restraining its ally: neither Wilhelm nor Moltke felt war with Russia could be justified by a dispute over Albania. But alliance obligations could not be totally denied. On 2 December 1912 Bethmann Hollweg declared in the Reichstag that, if Austria-Hungary was attacked by a third party while pursuing its interests, Germany would support Austria-Hungary and would fight to maintain its own position in Europe.85 On 5 December the Triple Alliance was renewed: the danger of Serbia, a possible proxy for a great power, having possession of an Adriatic port alarmed Italy as much as Austria-Hungary. Meanwhile, on 3 December Britain threatened to abandon its erstwhile policy of restraining Russia and France. Haldane warned the German ambassador in London that Britain would not accept a French defeat if a Russo-Austrian war led to a German attack on France. For both powers alliance loyalties outweighed the Concert of Europe.
Wilhelm was outraged by Haldane’s statement. He had been persuaded that the First Balkan War was a war that Russia had fought by proxy, and that presented real dangers for the dual monarchy. Austria-Hungary was therefore in the right and the British reaction revealed the futility of Bethmann Hollweg’s efforts to neutralize them. On 8 December he summoned a meeting at his palace. In attendance were Moltke, Tirpitz, August von Heeringen (the chief of the naval staff), and Georg Alexander von Müller (chief of the Kaiser’s naval cabinet). Austria-Hungary, the Kaiser said, should be encouraged to persist in a strong line with the Serbs. If Russia came to Serbia’s aid, Germany would fight. Wilhelm assumed that, in such a war, Bulgaria, Romania, Albania, and Turkey would stand with the Triple Alliance. Therefore Austria-Hungary would be freed from its Balkan commitments to concentrate against Russia, and Germany in turn could face west, with its full strength against France. Moltke greeted this scenario by saying that war was inevitable, and that the sooner it came the better for Germany. Tirpitz, on the other hand, reported that the fleet could not be ready for another twelve to eighteen months, by which time the Heligoland fortifications and the widening of the Kaiser Wilhelm canal to allow the passage of Dreadnoughts between the Baltic and the North Sea would be completed. Moltke remarked, not without justice, that the navy would never be ready.
Fritz Fischer has dubbed the meeting of 8 December 1912 a war council, and has seen a direct link between it and the outbreak of war in 1914.86 The meeting ended with only one resolution, that a press campaign should prepare the German public for war with Russia. There is no evidence that the press chief of the Foreign Ministry attempted to orchestrate such a campaign, or that the newspapers could have been so manipulated if he had.87 Fischer reckons two further conclusions were implied—that the army should be increased and that food stocks should be amassed. The 1913 law did give the army an increase of 136,000 men. In itself, however, the law does not prove Fischer’s point. The navy was over-represented at the meeting, naturally enough as its immediate cause was the attitude of Britain. The minister for war, the man charged with implementing any increase to the army, was not present. In reality the new army law was already in preparation before the meeting of 8 December and its target was an additional three corps, to enter the order of battle in 1916 (and not 1914). Moreover, the bill was less a bid for strategic supremacy than a reflection of military weakness. Turkey’s defeat cast doubts on the wisdom of German tactical doctrine and simultaneously removed an Asiatic counterweight to the Russian army. Both the latter and the French army, by the virtue of the three-year service law, were being increased.
What is more supportive of Fischer’s position is the change in the law’s priorities and the tempo of its implementation. The general staff’s worries about manpower in relation to Germany’s external threats had had to compete with the Ministry of War’s concerns for the army’s internal order. At one level these were a demand for quality rather than quantity: ideally, growth should have been gradual, to allow first for the expansion of the army’s training cadres, its officers and NCOs, and secondly to provide for the army’s infrastructure, its equipment and accommodation. In the event, however, the measured growth towards 1916 was discarded in favour of an immediate increase in numbers. The army’s field training, already compromised in part by its role as an agent of domestic order, was put second to its size. Heinz Pothoff, writing in the Berliner Tageblatt on 3 April 1913, thought such measures could only be justified if war occurred within a year: it ‘is no longer a peacetime measure, but simply a mobilization.88
On the second point, that of food stocks, nothing was done in relation to the population as a whole—although preparations were put in hand for feeding the army. Germany’s high tariffs limited its ability to stockpile grain. This omission did not indicate that Germany was not planning a war from December 1912 if it assumed that such a war would be short: but it did not follow that it definitely was preparing for war (albeit a short one), and such discussion as did occur on the food question suggests a distinct lack of urgency.
In addition to countering Fischer’s claims for the so-called ‘war council’, two further points need to be made. First, the meeting’s most logical consequence would have been a large navy bill. The Kaiser’s fire was directed at Britain, and it was the navy that said it was not ready for war. But, although the Kaiser endorsed the three ships-a-year tempo which Tirpitz had been advocating, Bethmann Hollweg was able to head off a new naval law. An increase in the navy would have cut across the needs of the army, and it was to those that the enthusiasms of the Reichstag could now be directed. The High Seas Fleet cont
inued to plan for war against France and Russia, despite Wilhelm’s injunction that it concentrate on Britain. Moltke’s expectation was proved right: the navy was not ready in July 1914 and probably would not have been in 1920. Tirpitz’s fleet was a weapon forged for cold war only. Secondly, Bethmann Hollweg was not present at the meeting and did not endorse its conclusions. The close relationship between the Kaiser and his service chiefs would probably permit a gathering that excluded the political leadership nonetheless being called a ‘war council’. But Bethmann Hollweg, not the service chiefs, took centre stage in the crisis that did lead to war. The policy which he—and Germany—followed between December 1912 and July 1914 is not marked by the consistency which would endorse Fischer’s argument. It is even hard to sustain the case for an increase in anti-Russian propaganda in 1913.
What remains striking about the meeting on 8 December is that the decision for peace or war was made conditional not on the objectives of policy but on the state of military readiness.89 The shift in attitudes to which this points was not confined to Germany, although it is probably true to say that the land arms race which it reflects was primarily a consequence of the 1912 German army law. Until 1910 the high-profile arms races had been between navies; in armies the modernization of equipment, and in particular the acquisition of quick-firing artillery, had acted as a brake on expansion. But after the second Moroccan crisis quantity not quality stoked the competition in land armaments. Very often the targets which the general staffs set were long term: in 1914 none of the current programmes of Germany, France, or Russia had been fully implemented. But the arguments which ministers of war used in order to secure the necessary appropriations revolved around present crises. Thus the Balkan wars sustained the momentum which Agadir had initiated. The trial mobilizations which became a feature of the diplomacy of those wars confirmed the emphasis on immediate readiness. Two independent but convergent consequences followed. First, external threats played key roles in parliamentary debates on finance, and the linking of public rhetoric to diplomacy narrowed the options open to foreign ministries. Secondly, foreign policy itself became militarized. This in turn gave general staffs greater political leverage in the formation of state strategy. As windows of opportunity seemed to close, so the idea of preventive war gained a hold.